Pet The Bull

"Pet him," my friend told me.

No way, I thought, remembering the sort of scenes I'd witnessed last year and the year before when it came to a full-grown rodeo bull.

"Chicken," she chided.

Absolutely accurate, and I didn't care.

"Here's my reasoning," I told her, turning my back on the massive beasts inside their pen while I was standing outside of the pen, "I saw these guys crush ribs last year. Doesn't it make sense that if I stuck my hand inside and patted his head, that he could bash it up against this rail here? I'm thinking he could easily break my wrist and smash my fingers."

"Yeah, he could," she agreed with a grin that was hard to read. Somewhere in there the word 'greenhorn city girl' was swimming around, I thought.

"Look at these bars," I explained, trying to further prove that my fear was more from simple common sense than from being naive, "They're flimsy. Even I can move them around. That doesn't seem secure to me."

My friend's mom, sitting nearby with the driver's side car door open, laughed and said, "Oh, Amy, you're precious."

I wasn't so sure I wanted to be precious, either, although I was their free entertainment of the evening. That was okay, the trade was an invitation to dinner. My friend and I walked around to the other pen, where the even bigger and more beastly bulls were.

"Aren't they pretty," she told me. That was not the word I would have chosen.

"Look at them when they're sleeping," my friend went on,"Their eyes are so cute, they look like they're smiling..."

I had to admit, yes, the eyes were sort of cute, in an 'I don't trust 'em, monster-ish' sort of way. They didn't look so cute while they were bucking, I can tell you that.

When we returned to the car, my friend's mother had a story to tell. It seemed that a couple of the bulls had gotten into a skirmish while we were away.

"Look," she said, pointing, "They bowed out that part of the pen."

Just about where I'd been standing earlier, a part of the metal was bent into the shape of an 'S'. I was sort of glad I'd chosen to step away before the scuffle occurred. I wouldn't be petting any bulls any time soon.

You can see my 'cute' friends at the Snake River Stampede this week, with some brave riders atop them, hoping to bring home the bacon.





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